Positively Bob Dylan

When Zainab McCoy, visual and performing artist from Philadelphia who is currently living in Oslo contacted me, I was immediately astonished by the unique item she had to offer: Her late husband Hans Marius Stormoen translated Dylan’s “Chronicles, Volume 1″ into Norwegian. After his work was finished, Zainab asked him what to do with the original manuscript. His simple reply was “Put it in the trash. Or just do whatever you want to do with it”, she tells me. But of course this is not what you would do with a true collector’s item.
To everyone’s surprise, just before Bob Dylan’s book was going to be released worldwide and Stormoen was nearly halfway finished translating it, the phone rang. It was the Chief Editor of the Norwegian publishing house, telling him to immediately stop his translation, “Dylan has sent us a new manuscript”! On the same day the new version of the manuscript arrived from New York, the one that would later end up as the official book release. Zainab’s job was to read both versions and mark the changes that Dylan had made so that her husband could easily find them and not have to completely run through what he had already translated. A complicated task, as she confirms.
Back to the first, completely unedited manuscript: As Zainab told me, in the first manuscript you can hear Dylan’s voice, his casual unedited way of speaking and writing. It even includes Bob’s personal note to the editor “type written on the PC”. None of the manuscripts contain any handwriting by Dylan. Still since there were so many changes made from the first to the second manuscript, the original unpublished version remains an important item for every serious rarities collector and Bob Dylan fan.

Please note that the authenticity of the original Chronicles manuscript copies can be verified by Morten Malmø, Chief Editor at DAMM/EGMONT in Oslo, Norway, who personally hand delivered the first manuscript to Hans Marius Stormoen, who also translated several other works such as Bob Dylan’s “Scrape Book”. He died on June 1, 2006, whilst in the middle of translating Sharon Osbourne’s autobiography “Extreme”.

Supported by positively-bobdylan.com Zainab McCoy now exclusively offers to sell the original first manuscript to the highest bidder - THIS IS A CALL TO SERIOUS COLLECTORS ONLY! McCoy will request a face-to-face meeting with the eventual buyer to see and purchase the complete manuscript. It will NOT be sent via e-mail! In case you are seriously interested, you may contact her at hmstormo@hotmail.com.

Bob seems to have found his RTR hat again. In a series of recent gigs he was seen wearing a hat that looks like the one from the 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue tour. Keep on keepin’ on, Bob - it still fits!

Check out Bob’s latest performance of “Lay Lady Lay” at the House of Blues in Dallas on February 23, posted by sonsofjah on youtube:

The Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles will be holding a symposium on influences that helped shape Dylan’s music. The event on March 30 will be hosted by Bob Santelli, director of the Grammy Museum and author of “The Bob Dylan Scrapbook”. The presented topics will include Dylan’s Minnesota roots, his Jewish upbringing, connections to black female gospel singers, and an examination of folk music before and after Dylan. One of the presenters will be Greil Marcus, cultural historian and author of “Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads”.
Ticket prices range from $35 (general) to $15 (students) and can be ordered online here.

Also “Bob Dylan’s American Journey, 1956-1966″ is still on view at the Skirball Cultural Center through June 8, 2008 . The exhibition features more than 160 artifacts, including Dylan’s handwritten drafts of classic songs, rare concert posters and a recording of his first concert, which has never been commercially released.

65 years old Suze Rotolo is going to release her book “A Freewheelin’ Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties” in May. The official release date is May 13, 2008 but it can already be pre-ordered on Amazon.com.
Rotolo is perhaps best known from the 1963 cover photography of “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan”, where she is walking through Greenwich Village with Bob. Both she and her sister Carla were close friends of Bob in the early 1960s. Her political and artist background is often regarded as having influenced Dylan’s early songwriting and his interest in art, especially painting.

A few years after having lost her connection to Dylan she got married to an Italian film editor. Their son now works as a musician in New York. Her latest public interviews on Dylan were for PBS news in 2004 and for Martin Scorsese’s documentary “No Direction Home” in 2005. The release of her new book comes along with the 45th anniversary of the “Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” album.